28 March 2007

Psst, wanna buy a house...?

If you're interested in moving down to the wilds of Dorset, Evil Twin and the boyf are trying to find buyers for their one bedroom mid terrace place in Blandford... It's only been on the market a couple of weeks...
It's on Right Move here if you've the inclination.... They really need some better photos (or any!) of it though....
Everybody's going to Canada...

World Horror Convention starts up in Toronto at the end of the week, and how jealous am I that I can't go. Too much work, not enough money. Bah. And it's Toronto people. The land of Charles De Lint! (Ok, I think technically he's Ottawa, but still, I've always wanted to go to Canada!)

So the lovely Chris Teague is going to be there, also Pete & Jan on their belated honeymoon, also Paul & Marie on their actual honeymoon (they got married last Friday, did I say?) And I have to confess to being quite curious about what a Steve Jones organised convention is like - plus there's rumours that they're introducing the Canucks to the raffle and after the Fcon debacle last year I'm quite interested to see how they do it. Have to rely on M&P reporting back, though...

Imminent technological doom...

Finally have the date for the dreaded broadband conversion. April 3rd. Eek. The seas will boil, the sky will be split asunder and it'll all go terribly terribly wrong. It's new tech in this house, so what else would we expect!

Get thee to a play...

And Chazzie baby has his play wot he writ opening next week. According to his latest blog, the opening night tickets are going slowly so if you're up Tyneside way, pop along and cheer him up!

The play's called 'A Cold Coming', and will be performed over April 3rd-5th at the Library Theatre, South Shields.

And in other Chaz related news, if you missed his Lit & Phil Xmas ghost story evening last year, the stories have been published in book form with an extra audio CD!
Blurb direct from himself: "Volume two is now available, featuring: Sean O'Brien, Gail-Nina Anderson, Chaz Brenchley, Ann Cleeves, Simon Morden and Carol McGuigan
The official RRP will be £18 (and, as Chaz says, six stories, two CDs, lovely binding - it's a bargain already...)," but for a limited period only, you can buy it directly from Lord Brenchley of Desperance via his website, for just £12 inc. p&p.
Any profits go straight back into funding next year’s event.
For the full skinny pop over to his website

Story Comps

Book2book recently gave a flying mention to an interesting sounding thing - apparently Gollancz & the Daily Mail are getting together on a novel writing comp, the prize being a £30,000 book contract and book published next spring. All you have to do is post your finished book ms to the Daily Mail by beginning of July... Full r&rs on both their websites.

Also, rumour has it that this year's SFX pulp idol continues a tradition of funny rules... this time, if you've ever been paid for piece of fiction, no matter where it appeared, you can't enter. Lo, the sounds of many dreams crashing...

Never mind... there's still the BFS story comp. Mum's admin-ing it again this year, and apparently we've got 3 author judges for the final round...possibly 4, I'm never sure, I stay well out of it... There's a 3000 word max set, but no theme thank god! It was bad enough getting the funny questions about the anniversary theme last year. How do people get our phone number to ask them? It's just a bit freaky. We've already had one chap ring up about this year's one asking if the title counts as part of the word count... (I've no idea, so don't ask me. Logic suggests no, but if you're that worried, surely you'd just cut a couple of superfluous words from the story text to allow for the title? Unless the title is one of those horribly long ones that are only sometimes amusing...)

Comics bits...

Apparently Power Girl's boobs are making for hot debates at the moment... the most recent JSA/JLA cover (for #10, I think) has Power Girl depicted with massive flesh coloured beach balls somehow magically attached to her torso. You have to wonder, how she can actually do any superheroing without getting brained by them... and that's without wondering how she doesn't just pop out through the costume window first time she moves... Mind you, that would make a hell of a distraction...

Shellyscomics made a good blog post about the subject, and here's where you'll find a scan of the image in question. (Second one down). Over at Greenlantern'sbutt you'll find a pic that works better for PG.

26 March 2007

Happy happy happy

Ha hah! No more Prism for me!! Finally finished the March Prism last week (yeah, I know, it was supposed to have been the Feb Prism... but honestly, what else did you expect?) Sent off to the printers and it's sooooo out of my hands now! Vicky's on the mailings now which is beyond fabulous as I can now sit back and watch as Prisms magically appear in the letterbox!

Of course, this didn't happen without the usual run of disasters. This time, it was all the Fcon photos fault. Ok, so technically we're a few months late for doing an Fcon 2006 report, but there were a heap of other BFS AGM type stuff that needed to be published for the members so it seemed churlish not to add the Fcon report (a multi person deal with bits from Allen Ashley, Pete Coleborn, and Paul K & Marie O'R.) So the first batch of photos I had were from uncle Pete, and I'm sure that last time I fiddled with them they were fine... but alas, when I really needed them to work, just touching one of them froze up my machine to the extent where plugs and batteries had to be yanked before it would do anything.

Luckily, ace reporter Sandy A. takes bucketloads of photos so I had those. Except, after inserting every thirdish one, my poor machine crashed... cue many reboots. But it got there eventually.

So, this week our Vicky will be mailing out awards recs forms & an Fcon newsletter/progress reporter thingybob.
Next week, probs towards the end, there'll be a jumbo Prism (108 pages!! 108 freaking pages people... for Prism, that's damn near illegal...) and a jumbo Dark Horizons (about 112 pages I think uncle Pete said. Or possibly 140. Probs somewhere inbetween...) DH is the 50th issue so they're doing something or other there. The Anne Sudworth cover is gorgeous (a bit horror-y, for which I'm sure there'll be the usual complaints from the horror bias obsessed crowd.).

But mainly, I'm just looking forward to having Prism out of my brain. And I don't have to mail it anymore! Tee hee!

Which means I can finish up the H&N wind up stuff, focus properly on Fcon and do other funky stuff...like finish up the Egyptology course, (which is a bit lightweight, so I've turned into something of an extra-credit junkie what with extra research and the like...) , then I can do a part time Uni course in October.
The course'll be a little scary as apparently it'll be equivalent to a first year undergraduate thingy and this from someone who didn't stay in school long enough to get GCSEs, let alone A levels... (got a couple of GCSEs and an A level Archaeology at night school years later, but that's by the by...) And since the uni course is archaeology/history thing with optional modules in art & architecture, it's not totally impossible. Plus, as it's adult ed, lack of formal qualifications is not a problem. Which is nice.

And in other news, the Evil Twin is moving back up north with her boyf. Probably around the Hook/Basingstoke area, and intends to join the family business for her main income (despite maintaining for years that she would never, ever, indulge!) So we've had to rework the office to accommodate her, and it means less work for me, (and less money, but I'd rather be skint and less stressed). May just drive me a bit potty though.

Harry Dresden
And I've just discovered the Harry Dresden phenomenon. Had flicked on the TV proggy the other week but wasn't overly bothered either way, but then Orbit send me a copy of the latest book in the series so I found a few hours spare to settle down and give it a go.
Proven Guilty is the 8th book in the series, so right off the bat there's the threat of missing backstory... and I wasn't too hopeful when it started off a tad slow. Then something clicked and I couldn't stop reading the damn thing.
Needless to say, I now think it's the hottest thing eva! Since the last hottest thing eva! :->

It picks up and speeds along from crisis to crisis to disaster to almost certain death and back again and a good portion of it is set in a horror film convention. Which was a bit of added fun.
The few back references to previous Dresden adventures don't impede on the enjoyment if you've not read them as it's easy to get the gist of what happened. And I love the politics between the various supernatural factions. And the hints of greater machinations. Truly excellent. And, of course, I now need to read the other 7. Like, now.










20 March 2007

Bloody hell! We got Terry Brooks for Fcon!!!

That's all I'm sayin'!

(That and I'm still in the middle of wrapping up the things that need wrapping up amidst file corruptions and mysterious dead phone lines....)